For a lot of the past year I had the opportunity to work on the Batman: The Brave & The Bold animated series as a background painter. The chance came via my long-time friend William Dunn, the Background Color Supervisor on the show, whom I’ve known since our days as students at the Joe Kubert School.
Bill’s been out in L.A. for a number of years and has not only had an impressive career in the animation industry, but is an even more accomplished painter on the side.

I was already a fan of the show, so when the schedule got tight and Bill needed help, I was more than happy to pitch in.

Getting to work on a smoothly run production like this one, and on such a well-done homage to one of my favorite characters, was a rare and much appreciated opportunity. I also learned a lot from Bill, who knew exactly the results he wanted and how to get them.

World’s Finest Online recently posted this interesting and insightful interview with Bill.

I’m slowly working on an illustration. Here it is in its preliminary stages.
I started with this rough sketch:

There’s a central figure, surrounded by a ring of vignettes, a title at the top, and a credit at the bottom. Kind of a movie poster approach. I made a series of subsequent drawings to clarify these ideas. First:

A little easier to make out the faces and figures, but almost a setback in other ways. Maintaining the circular composition is important, but the central figure is getting overpowered by the other elements. An easy fix. Just a matter of paying more attention to the size and placement of all the elements.
Another draft:

Now it’s starting to fit together. As I add and delete different elements, I’ve moved them around and grouped them differently. Characters and things that go together thematically are now next to each other, so the entire image is developing a sort of narrative, even if the meaning isn’t noticeable to anyone else yet. I can see, though, that the large head towards the top is going to make it hard to place a title without throwing the whole thing out of whack. The head needs to come down into the illustration more.
Another draft.

That large head at the top is comfortably out of the way and working better with the rest of the design. This is about all I need to move forward from these thumbnail drawings to a stab at finished pencils. I’m letting it sit for a few days, though, so I can look at it with a fresh eye later on.

Either more of these layouts or finished pencils soon…